Waiting for 'Dark Mare' to emerge?

Incumbent presidents are usually strongly positioned for re-election. Look at FDR, Eisenhower, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and Bush 43.
And history teaches us that a challenge to a sitting president from within his own party usually divides the party and dooms it to defeat in the general election. That’s what Sen. Ted Kennedy’s ill-fated challenge to President Jimmy Carter did in 1980.
Thus, it is not at all surprising that no challenge from within the Democratic Party has emerged to President Obama. And I suppose the conventional wisdom will prevail, and no such challenge will occur.
But 2012 is an unconventional year, and perhaps it’s worth thinking some unconventional thoughts. America faces enormous problems, and they are growing worse. Moreover, the American people know this, even if the political class denies it. America is in decline. That’s the heart of the message in Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum’s book, “That Used to Be Us,’’ which I have begun to write about.
Large majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents know that the nation is not headed in the right direction.
That’s why the emerging contours of the 2012 presidential contest are unconventional. One would expect that President Obama would by now be the underdog for re-election. But, while his poll numbers are down, he still appears to have a better-than-even chance to win re-election. And this is because the GOP appears likely to nominate a candidate incapable of defeating a president who has demonstrated that he can’t do the job. There may be some who believe that Obama, or Texas Gov. Rick Perry, or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney can get us out of the mess we’re in. But most of us don’t.
And that’s what makes 2012 an unconventional year. So here’s an alternative. For the record, it’s not one I like, but that’s no matter.
Think back to 2008. There seemed to be little doubt that Sen. Hillary Clinton had a clear path to the Democratic nomination and the White House. Surely, the upstart effort of Barack Obama posed no serious threat. But Clinton’s hubris, coupled with her strategic error of ignoring the states that held caucuses rather than primaries, put her campaign in a hole from which she could not escape.
Since then, she has ably served as secretary of state, a position that has isolated her from the economic and domestic mess that the rest of the Obama administration has served up.
You can be certain that the “Billaries,” whose political ambitions have no end, are seeing an opening here, an opening created by a president who can’t do the job and a set of Republican adversaries who can’t either.
The question for the “Billaries,” and it’s a daunting question, is how to thread the eye of this needle.
If the “Dark Mare” sticks her nose out of the barn, it will change everything.